


By That Dear Name

by draculard



Category: The Devil Crept In - Ania Ahlborn
Genre: Biting, Breastfeeding, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abusing Parent, Gen, Incestuous Undertones, Parent-Child Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-11-02 13:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20756324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Rosie sits in the old $5,000 Ford with her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes glued to the almost invisible logging road where Ansel died nearly twenty years before.





	By That Dear Name

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Edgar Allan Poe's "To My Mother."

Rosie sits in the old $5000 Ford with her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes glued to the almost invisible logging road where Ansel died nearly twenty years before. Blood trickles down the side of her face from a wound in her temple and she wipes it away absently, not even looking at the red smear it leaves on her fingers. 

_ Sweat,  _ she thinks.  _ And it’s not even hot out. _

She adjusts the rearview mirror and clears her throat. Her eyes flicker to the backseat. It’s been years since she last strapped Otto into a car seat and took him with her to the grocery store. She remembers how it hurt him when she manipulated his twisted little limbs so she could buckle the safety belt. He’d howl and wail all the way to the store, and then he’d go silent, staring around with his filmy eyes as Rosie parked in the shade and checked to make sure the cardboard taped to the windows wouldn’t let sunlight in through any cracks.

Otto’s not with her now. She likes to think he’s in the house, in the basement, in Ansel’s safe. She suspects he’s really in the woods, like he always is after the sun goes down.

She puts the car in drive and inches onto the old dirt road. She imagines the loud noise Otto’s body would make if he jumped from one of the nearby trees and landed on the roof of her car. She imagines his gnarled fists slamming into the windshield, forming spiderweb cracks, rising up and coming down again even harder.

But nothing happens. Rosie inches out of the forest unharmed. The nose of her car pokes out of the trees like a frightened rabbit leaving its hole for just a second to scope out the town. 

Then she turns onto the highway, swings left, and heads for Big Sur.

* * *

The clerk clears his throat. His eyes jump down to Rosie’s breasts. He looks away, cheeks burning, clears his throat again.

As she presents the exact amount of cash needed for a fresh tank of gas, Rosie glances down at herself and sees what he’s clearing his throat about. There are rust-colored spots on her blouse, over her nipples, and even as she watches, a fresh dot of bright red blood appears and spreads across the fabric.

She looks up, eyes cold, pretending she hasn’t noticed. She catches sight of herself in the mirror hanging behind the cashier  — gaunt and shallow, deep bags beneath her eyes, blood on her shirt. She hasn’t eaten since she left Otto. She tells herself her appetite is gone because of guilt.

She thinks about the sugary coffee for sale in the corner of the gas station, where a trucker three times Rosie’s size is filling up a Styrofoam cup. She darts her eyes down to the rows of candy bars beneath the register and scans them coldly, cataloguing all her old favorites, taking note of the new ones she’s never heard of before.

She’s never fed Otto a candy bar. She dreams of an alternate world, where Otto holds her hand and his fingers are slim and normal, where she looks down and sees a head of bright blond curls atop his head, where Otto points to his favorite candy and looks at her with big, blue, pleading eyes.

And then she realizes the boy she’s picturing is Max Larsen, Otto’s first victim, and she shakes the image away. The thought of coffee and candy bars stirs nothing inside her. She looks at the stale, malformed donuts in the lighted case and her appetite stays dead.

When did she stop enjoying food?

“Ma’am,” the cashier says.

He’s handing her a receipt. Rosie takes it without looking and shoves it deep into her purse. Her voice comes out breathy, rattled. Her knees are trembling.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you. Thank you.”

And she hurries away, unable to bear the boy’s wide eyes.

* * *

She parks the Ford in an empty parking lot late at night. The light above her head doesn’t respond when she pushes on it  — burnt out. So she starts the car again and eases it over to a parking space right beneath a dim, flickering streetlight, and then she parks it again.

She shifts in her seat, straightening her legs to push herself up higher, higher, until the image in the rearview mirror is a close-up of the bloodstains on her shirt. She hikes her blouse up, inching the fabric away from her skin.

_ Rip it off,  _ she tells herself.  _ Like a Band-Aid. _

But she can’t. She eases it up, mindful of the tearing sensation on her flesh, and reveals the open gashes lining her breasts  — an almost perfect circle of wounds emanating from her nipples. Looking at them, she can’t decide what it reminds her of more: a hazard symbol or the ripples on the surface of a pond after you drop a stone in.

How long has it been since she breast-fed Otto? She can still feel the clamp of his little grey teeth. She tells herself it’s normal for old wounds to re-open, but really, it doesn’t feel normal. It feels like revenge, or like karma. Like this is what she gets for abandoning her son.

She swallows hard. Her throat is dry; the convulsion of muscles beneath her skin is painful, sharp.

“Otto,” she whispers, and she lowers her blouse again and closes her eyes.

* * *

Just outside Monterey, she pulls the car off the road into a lookout and watches the other vehicles move past her. To her right, grey water surges up to the sand and retreats again. Tourists pick their way over the beach, searching for a good spot for a family photo.

When she gets out of the car, a man in cargo shorts waves at her, tries to get her attention. He’s summoning her, Rosie realizes, to take a photo of him, his wife, their perfect son. She turns away, pretending not to see.

It’s too cold for a swim. She walks right up to the water and dips her toes in.

Did she come here to see Ras again? Or did she come here to drown? She contemplates it seriously, eyebrows drawn as she breathes in the strange odor of the ocean  — one part of it the refreshing scent of salt, one part of it carrying the rotten flesh of dead, dried-up seals. 

The next family who glances her way, wondering if Rosie will take their photo for them, has a daughter. She takes the photo. She almost runs away with it; she stares at the little frozen smiles reflected back at her from their digital camera and feels a pain in her womb so sharp, so strong, that for a moment she thinks she’s miscarrying again.

And then she remembers, of course, that she isn’t pregnant.

And she remembers Otto.

And she gives the camera back to the family and walks away.

* * *

She makes it home by nightfall. She thinks of a movie she and Ansel watched one night — _Rosemary’s Baby, _about a young woman who births the Antichrist. She remembers the ending that so disappointed her at the time.

Rosemary rocking the cradle.

Rosemary comforting her evil infant son.

She leans her forehead against the steering wheel and rattles out a sigh. The open wounds circling her nipples twinge and ache.

“Otto,” she whispers, “I’m home, baby. Mama’s home.”


End file.
